Electric Company Spidey Covers

So I was watching some old clips of The Electric Company on my lunch hour yesterday and saw a few spots featuring Spider-Man. As many of you may remember, the "Spidey" stories on Electric Company couched all of his adventures within the context of comic books. The introducing song ran over a clip of someone opening a Spidey comic, the episode itself was framed within a comic book panel, and the series ending with the closing of the comic.

Something I noticed in watching the clips was the artwork used for the covers... Obviously, these two covers were mocked up specifically for the show but they should look familiar to long-time fans of Amazing Spider-Man and/or John Romita and Gil Kane...


Then there's this next cover, which is obviously a bit more generic and was used for multiple show introductions...

This was actually based on another piece of Romita art that was used, not on a comic, but on the cover to the Spider-Man: Beyond the Grave album from 1972. It was essentially an audio drama but the album cover included what were kind of like storyboards, i.e. comics but with no actual dialogue or captions. It featured Rene Auberjonois as the voice of Spider-Man. At the time, Auberjonois was probably best known as portraying Father Mulcahy in the movie version of M*A*S*H. He would later go on to memorable roles in the TV shows Benson and Deep Space Nine. Here's the first chapter...

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